A Month of Primality – The Prologue

I’m losing weight. I have been for a little while now. Some people have asked and I’ve told them privately, but because I want to really motivate some folks to jump on this train I’ve decided to blog it. In August of 2010. I was almost 180 lbs at my highest, and I’m almost 25 pounds down from that now. Most of which has been since the beginning of the year.

There’s lots of parts to this story, and I’ll try to separate them out a little so it doesn’t get too boring, but in the next month I plan to talk about my weight loss journey, the things that didn’t work for me and the stuff that did, how exercise factored in, go over how my current success via the primal blueprint has worked, and challenge some folks to try it!

I’m going to start with that last one first!

So, if you’ve seen any of my haiku/twitter/facebook/in-person-rants about food in the last few months you’ll know I’ve been doing this primal diet thing. It’s based on the book(The Primal Blueprint) and website (Marks Daily Apple) by Mark Sisson. I found his website while looking for ways to supplement workouts and it caught my eye as a comprehensive lifestyle change rather than just an eating plan, though of course the eating plan alone works very effectively!

Those wanting info would be well served to look at this page which has the majority of the information, but I’m going to distill the quick bits here because I wanted to push some folks I know to try it for a month.

I think the best way to get into it is not just to try or even to ease into it. I think jumping in with both feet is what worked for me. It was surprising how well it fit with my ingrained tastes and expectations about food and hunger, so trying it for a month got the buy-in from me and the more I researched the more I liked it.

Thus, let’s quick to the basics:
The diet portion of it is the major bit: 80%. And with that 80% alone I saw results. If there’s any easing into the whole program, I think it has to be doing the intake change first. Exercise is important, but it’s overemphasized.

In super-duper-short, the plan says to eat enough protein to keep you strong, enough vegetables to keep you healthy, and forgo most carbs, especially anything that comes from grains.

The medium answer is the current state of the american diet is what makes people fat: food pyramids being wrong is old news, but the other wrong is that everything can be solved by whole grains. The primal blueprint embraces the tenet that pre-agricultural people (the mythical “Grok” in Mark’s terms) lived a healthy and happy life without grains and in a diet high in meats. Before you start saying “Atkins, noooo!!!” this plan is a lot more reasonable and is much more nuanced than “just don’t eat carbs”

The eating breaks down into just a few pieces:
1. eat enough protein: Protein’s the building blocks of the body, so it’s important to take in enough to make sure it doesn’t start robbing from muscles to get fuel.
there’s a math calculation to figure out how much you need and you have to know your body fat percentage: (weight in lbs – body fat %) * 0.8 = minimum protein intake per day in grams. For me, that number is 89g.
2. don’t eat too many carbs: the human body’s really good at making fuel for itself. This plan reduces the emphasis on direct carbs which means
a. it’ll try to metabolize protein and fat in your body… gee, doing #1 means it won’t rob from muscles, so your body wants to burn fat… awesome!
b. extra carbs in the blood are turned quickly to glycogen by insulin which is used by muscles as emergency stores… but if you aren’t exercising to use that glycogen it turns into saturated fat. Not having extra carbs means less of that happening.
50-100g of carbs is about right for weight loss for me, >100 and I don’t lose weight, >150 and I gain weight. This relationship is numerically true for me.
3. eat enough veggies: vegetables are great for keeping the system running. They have fiber, vitamins, antioxidants, and lots of other good stuff. A good number to shoot for is 5/day, but I say what the heck. Shoot for 7. Sometimes I try for 10!
A serving is 1/2 a cup of veggies, but it’s a whole cup if they’re leafy.
4. Other than enough of those things, eat almost anything else. Seriously.
5. A quick word about fats: they’re fine. Fats are the fuel in this new food economy, and they make you full faster, so it’s double-good. Preferring omega-3 fats over omega-6 is the best thing. Omega-6 is bad fat… think fried foods, plain vegetable oils. Omega-3 is good fat: avocados, nuts and derived butters, most fish.

Now, is that enough to get a handle on to try for a month? NO. For a day or two until more research can be done? Probably. So I say try it tomorrow. Leave the bread behind when you get a sandwich. Ask for the fajita plate but substitute more veggies for the rice. Get a handful of almonds and walnuts or even macadamia nuts (just not peanuts — they’re not nuts, they’re beans!) if you get a craving in the afternoon.

There is more, of course, but I think that’s good to get started, and there will be more to come. I want the folks reading this to try it for 30 days, so I’m going to do my darndest to make 30 days worth of interesting accompaniment to go along with it. I’m going to blog all the food I eat for the next 30 days here. I’ll also be posting all my food nutrition stuff on Fitday while I’m at it. (BTW, there are other services; I’ve heard dailyburn.com is even better, but I have some historical data at fitday, so I’m there for better or worse).

Join me for a month and let’s all be awesome.